For many years, the health industry has been a closed system. Today we are seeing innovative new entrants challenge the traditional healthcare ecosystem, setting the stage for a New Health Economy. These new entrants come from the technology, consumer product, retail, telecommunications, and automotive industries. One thing they all have in common is that they are taking advantage of the expanding healthcare market. Healthcare Tech is an industry to watch because it provides many valuable benefits to both medical professionals and their patients.

Approximately 15% of the health apps are marketed to medical professionals. This percentage could rise quickly due to the number of eager entrepreneurs, the speed of development and the ongoing improvement of the health apps. By 2018, GlobalData estimates that the size of the health information technology market will reach beyond $8 billion. This is largely due to the rate of development of mobile healthcare apps, thus producing many new useful medical apps for both healthcare providers and patients. The possibilities of these health apps seem to be endless. They range from an app that lets you search for information on specific medications, to looking for an answer to a medical question in a hurry. Some let you download relevant medical journals, audio and video sources. The list goes on and on from getting feedback on a rare condition, connecting patients with another person in their proximity if they have forgotten to take their medicine, fitness goal achievement, pregnancy tracking, patient – doctor video chatting and many more. The health tech industry is booming, and there is an app for everyone depending on what your specific health needs or goals are.

Today, most of the health apps on the market focus on challenges in hospital settings, but are not interested in the mental state of the patient following a traumatic accident. The pool of highly innovative apps is enormous, but there is a specific mobile health app type that stands out from the rest. Smart Bytes’ Super Patient mobile health app provides medical professionals with the ability to track their patients’ post-traumatic stress levels, cognitive capabilities and anxiety levels, all in real time.

To take on the technical side of the project, Smart Bytes turned to Software Nation for the actual development of the mobile application. In an effort to produce the best possible user experience, Software Nation kept in mind that the focus group for the health app was recovering ICU patients in active therapy.

Luckily, one of the lead designers of Super Patient shared his insights and experience with us. Without any medical background, it was a unique situation for him to be put into, so the project required more supervision from the client. This was necessary to decide on a subtle pallet of shapes, colors, and animation. The Software-Nation team focused their attention on in-game sound with very minimal animation and main avatar motion. The artist who worked only on avatar creation was under strict supervision of the client and their team. His inspiration came from a medicine pill as a way to present the app as a path to recovery. The actual gamification and game flow was completely built from scratch. The game section of the application was developed in cohesion between Software-Nation and Smart Bytes. Together we created a perfectly balanced game session that was tailored to help monitor the mood and cognitive functions of the user (patient). Software Nation’s team of developers and designers were given constant feedback from the medical staff. After a knowledge driven session of trial and error, the building of the health app from scratch proved to be a success.

The games are adequately balanced in an effort to make medical professionals comfortable with tracking their patients’ progress after leaving the ICU, whilst making the patients comfortable with using it on their part. Super Patient allows patients to choose one out of five mind games to play or a journal to communicate how they are feeling at the moment. Simple changes in behavior over time provide medical professionals with invaluable insight. There are a number of additional benefits that come from this unique mobile health app such as decreased health care costs, a better patient-doctor relationship, possibility to help treat patients in various situations (post-traumatic stress, brain injury, dementia, etc.), and a global system-integration potential.

The team at Software Nation is thankful for the opportunity to work on a project of this kind. It was a great experience getting to combine design, animation, games, and mobile development. Software Nation developed Super Patient for the greater cause of making someone’s healing process a little more pleasant and a little less painful.